


Interlude: The Charm

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Marks [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 21:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7137782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard, the good luck token he never goes offworld without."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude: The Charm

“What is that?” Rodney asked.

John paused. “What?”

“That thing you’re about to put into your tac vest.” Rodney gestured.

John looked hesitant for a moment, but then he held out the object for Rodney to see. It was a lump of grey metal with blue streaks in it. It looked Ancient, to the say the least. “It’s my good luck charm.”

Rodney snorted. “Good luck charm? I’d heard you - you _zoomies_ could be superstitious, but really?”

“Never go offworld without it,” John said.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. A friend gave it to me. It’s just a - a thing. Sometimes I use it as a paperweight. At my desk. Well, I did before.”

Paper was a rare thing on Atlantis. Rodney was sure the entire expedition would fail if the laptops and datapads died.

“Does it do anything?”

“It, uh, it kept my hands warm when we were in the desert,” John said, and there was a lot of history in that sentence. Rodney knew John had been stationed in Afghanistan before McMurdo. He must have gotten the thing from a fellow soldier.

“He said it never felt warm to him, but it always felt warm to me. And - it lights up.” John held it out, and it began to glow blue.

Ancient blue.

Rodney stared. “Where did your friend say he found this?”

“Traded for it at a local bazaar or something. Thought it was - it was space rock,” John said. “It was his good luck charm before - before. And then he gave it to me. Said it’d keep me safe. Always bring me home.”

Rodney was often socially oblivious, but sometimes even he could read between the lines. The charm hadn’t brought his friend home.

“It’s why I sat in the chair, in Antarctica,” John said. “The design thingie on the back of the chair - it’s made of the same stuff. I was curious. I wondered, if I could make this light up, if the chair would light up too.” He ducked his head. “If you look really closely at the Ancient chair in Antarctica, there’s a piece that’s -”

“Broken off,” Rodney said, realization dawning. “I noticed that. We assumed because it was so old it must have just been damaged over time, but -”

John held up his good luck charm and shrugged. “Yeah. So -”

“So when you sat in the chair, you knew you might be able to make it work?”

John wet his lips. “I wasn’t sure. I mean, I always told myself that I’d just found the button on it and he hadn’t, or something. The way my hand shaped was more ideal or - whatever. The thought that I might be able to make something warm my hands or light up with my mind was a little too much. I didn’t want anyone to think I was...weird.”

(Later, when Rodney learned just how different John was from ordinary people, he’d appreciate just how much the thought of being noticed for his difference scared John.)

“As soon as you realized what it was, you should have turned it over for study,” Rodney said.

John curled his hand over the stone protectively. “It’s my good luck charm. I figured, once I knew what it was, it was just part of the chair that made it glow so users knew it was on. Like an LED or light bulb. An Ancient night light isn’t a big deal.” And he tucked it into his vest.

“Let me study it later,” Rodney insisted.

John rolled his eyes. “Fine. Later.”

Only he never got to it later, because they went offworld, and an alien bug tried to suck the life out of John, and whatever that stone was, it wasn’t a charm, and it sure as hell wasn’t lucky. The only reason the entire jumper made it back in one piece was science and good timing.

(Much, much later, Rodney would start to believe that maybe John’s little Ancient night light paperweight good luck charm was something more powerful than any of them knew.)


End file.
